Henry Somers-Hall 
Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation 
Dialectics of Negation and Difference

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze’s philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze’s antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant’s own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze’s relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze’s philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel’s own philosophy.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION



1. Deleuze and Transcendental Epiricism



Introduction

Kant and the
Critique of Pure Reason
Sartre and
The Transcendence of the Ego
Deleuze and
The Logic of Sense
Conclusion



2. Difference and Identity



Introduction

Aristotle

The Genus and Equivocity in Aristotle

Change and the Individual

Aquinas

Symbolic Logic

Preliminary Conclusions

Hegel and Aristotle

Zeno

Conclusion



PART TWO: RESPONSES TO REPRESENTATION



3. Bergsonism



Introduction

Bergson’s Account of Kant and Classical Logic

Bergson’s Method of Intuition

Bergson and the Two Kinds of Multiplicity

Conclusion



4. The Virtual and the Actual



Introduction

The Two Multiplicities

Depth in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty

Deleuze and the Structure of the Problem

Bergson on Ravaisson

Conclusion



5. Infinite Thought



Introduction

Kant and Hegel

The Metaphysical Deduction and Metaphysics

From Being to Essence

The Essential and the Inessential

The Structure of Reflection

The Determinations of Reflection

The Speculative Proposition

The Concept of Essence in Aristotle and Hegel

Conclusion



PART THREE: BEYOND REPRESENTATION



6. Hegel and Deleuze on Ontology and the Calculus



Introduction

The Calculus

Hegel and the Calculus

Berkeley and the Foundations of the Calculus

Deleuze and the Calculus

Hegel and Deleuze

The Kantian Antinomies

Conclusion



7. Force, Difference, and Opposition



Introduction

Force and the Understanding

The Inverted World

Deleuze and the Inverted World

The One and the Many

Conclusion



8. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism



Introduction

The
Philosophy of Nature

Hegel and Evolution

Hegel’s Account of the Structure of the Organism

Hegel, Cuvier, and Comparative Anatomy

Deleuze, Geoffroy, and Transcendental Anatomy

Teratology and Teleology

Contingency in Hegel’s
Philosophy of Nature
Conclusion




Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Henry Somers-Hall is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. He is the cotranslator (with Alistair Welchman, Mergen Reglitz, and Nick Midgley) of Salomon Maimon’s
Essay on Transcendental Philosophy.